"Linking Worlds" Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. |
She wants to know the ghosts.
She wants to see them, finally, to hear their stories, to understand what this world was to them when they were here.
Not that she believes they will depart if she does. They are, it seems, inseparable from their places, with little desire to wander elsewhere. And in truth, that makes perfect sense; she comes from a people whose existence, whose identity, are bound up inextricably with place, and the world of the afterlife, though different, is yet the same.
Perhaps that's true of most ghosts, even those whose lives were amputated from the lands from which their ancestry arose.
She doesn't know quite why she suddenly feels compelled to see them. It presents a distraction, of course, a diversion from her own ghosts who have haunted her throughout her life, ghosts whose behavior while alive afforded them mostly no right to any claim on her thoughts. They refuse to let go, but she's tired, and she's made a conscious decision to ignore them. Let them weep and wail, scold and scorn, gnash their teeth and rattle their chains; she has armored herself against them, cautiously, carefully, but finally, and she has purposely turned a blind eye and deaf ear.
And with that turn, she saw and heard the others.
She wonders whether these are the beings that she has felt with her at times throughout her life: in sleep, awake, in that netherworld between the two states of being. The sounds and sensations, the glimpses and voices and feelings that have surrounded her nearly everywhere she's lived, save for school dormitory housing and a few modern-ish apartments. The land surrounding them, of course, is another thing entirely, but the newer buildings have never felt alive with other spirits as the old ones have.
She is leaving her own ghosts behind.
It's a time to visit other ghosts.
It's a time for linking worlds.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
No comments:
Post a Comment